October 20, 2022 – May 7, 2023
Special Exhibition Hall. 3rd Floor
Included with admission. Free for Gardiner Friends.

Enter a world at once familiar and uncanny. Montreal-based artist Karine Giboulo invites visitors into an immersive reimagining of her home. Brought to life by over 500 miniature polymer clay figures, this is no ordinary house. A response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the waves of confinement and isolation that followed, Housewarming is a sculpted documentary of individual and collective experiences grounded in current events. With the pandemic as a constant presence, the colourful dioramas furnishing each room prompt reflection about the challenges we face as a society. Their stories amplify themes pertaining to connectedness and isolation, aging and care, labour and consumerism, the climate crisis, food insecurity, and housing instability. The exhibition also unveils a personal narrative of self-acceptance and identity and transports us to the world of childhood, a critical period in the development of consciousness about the world.

On the kitchen countertop, a line of people, masked and socially distanced, await access to a food bank. In the bedroom, the drawer of a dresser opens to reveal rows of masked factory workers hunched over industrial sewing machines. In the laundry room, a forgotten iron causes a forest fire, forcing animals to flee their natural habitat.

Always direct and incisive, Giboulo’s microcosms articulate unexpected juxtapositions playful and sad, realistic and absurd, poetic and political prompting a range of emotions from delight to profound empathy. The more closely we look, the more we may recognize ourselves in the scenarios and their protagonists.